Re: [Regression] stress-ng udp-flood causes kernel panic on Ampere Altra

[Kajetan Puchalski]

On Tue, Jul 05, 2022 at 12:24:49PM +0100, Will Deacon wrote:
> > > Sorry, but I have absolutely no context here. We have a handy document
> > > describing the differences between atomic_t and refcount_t:
> > > 
> > > 	Documentation/core-api/refcount-vs-atomic.rst
> > > 
> > > What else do you need to know?
> > 
> > Hmm, and I see a tonne of *_inc_not_zero() conversions in 719774377622
> > ("netfilter: conntrack: convert to refcount_t api") which mean that you
> > no longer have ordering to subsequent reads in the absence of an address
> > dependency.
> 
> I think the patch above needs auditing with the relaxed behaviour in mind,
> but for the specific crash reported here possibly something like the diff
> below?
> 
> Will
> 
> --->8
> 
> diff --git a/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c b/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c
> index 082a2fd8d85b..5ad9fcc84269 100644
> --- a/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c
> +++ b/net/netfilter/nf_conntrack_core.c
> @@ -1394,6 +1394,7 @@ static unsigned int early_drop_list(struct net *net,
>                  * already fired or someone else deleted it. Just drop ref
>                  * and move to next entry.
>                  */
> +               smp_rmb();      /* XXX: Why? */
>                 if (net_eq(nf_ct_net(tmp), net) &&
>                     nf_ct_is_confirmed(tmp) &&
>                     nf_ct_delete(tmp, 0, 0))
> 

Just to follow up, I think you're right, the patch in question should be
audited further for other missing memory barrier issues.
While this one smp_rmb() helps a lot, ie lets the test run for at least
an hour or two, an overnight 6 hour test still resulted in the same
crash somewhere along the way so it looks like it's not the only one
that's needed.